Monday 25 July 2011

Beach Handles

Time flys at the moment, I'm spending a lot of time organising the Carpenters Fellowships main event of the year "Farme".

The Carpenters Fellowship is an organisation dedicated to promoting communication, training and sharing of knowledge amongst those interested in historic and contemporary timber framed structures. Every year a large proportion of the oak framed carpenters from around the country, and some from abroad, get together, and have a good time.

This year "Frame" is going to be held in St Fagans Museum near Cardiff, it's a great museum, which fits in really well with what the Fellowship does.

Every year we hold an auction to raise some funds for the fellowship. This year I'm donating a saw to the auction. It will be one of my site saws with the English beech handle.

Well I've run out of beech, so off to the local sawmill to pick up a 1"board.

I use Whitney sawmills on the river Wye. They are a great small sawmill that only uses home grown timber, but the quality of their timber and sawing is excellent.

I was shown to the stack of beech and let loose to rumage through till I found the one for me.

Well here it is, and I can tell that it will come up a treat when the handles are finished.










The handle for the fellowship saw is roughed out ready for shaping.

You  can see the contrast with a half finished American black walnut handle above.

Since I don't know who is going to get the fellowship saw, I'm going to leave the saw with no teeth, and let the winning bidder choose the tooth pattern.

They'll  get an invite to cut the teeth themselve in my workshop, or I can cut them and post the saw on.

Frame is a great event but it does take a lot of organising.

I'm also running a demonstration on restoring old saws back to life. At some point I have to take my workshop apart and pack it up to go to Cardiff.



All the hard work will be worth it.